CSI: Rockville

Kimberly C. Dunn works in a world where crime and science intersect. Miss Dunn, a forensic specialist for the Montgomery County Police Department, uses high-tech tools and razor-sharp reasoning to help detectives solve rapes, murders, burglaries and other crimes.

As a crime-scene investigator, she deals routinely with dead bodies, murder weapons and blood.

A door in her office is labeled “Blood Drying Room.” It is near some cabinets labeled “Fingerprint Lifting Tape” and “Thief Powder.”

But “CSI: Rockville” does not have the drama of popular TV shows.

“In real life, it’s a very slow, methodical process. On ‘CSI,’ they solve a crime in an hour. They get to kick in doors and interrogate people. No such luck here,” Miss Dunn said.

She usually works one of two shifts: weekdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. or weekdays from 3 to 11 p.m.

Even when they have no new crime scenes to investigate, Miss Dunn and her colleagues stay busy doing paperwork, dusting confiscated guns for fingerprints or collecting pictures of evidence.

When a major crime occurs in Montgomery County, Miss Dunn and her colleagues race to the scene to collect evidence.

“It’s a lot like firefighting. There are bursts of excitement followed by long stretches of boredom,” she said.

Miss Dunn is thankful the job has not left her jaded.

“When you stand next to a dead person, you know they are not there anymore. The body is a shell. Their spirit has gone on, hopefully to a better place. It’s something you can’t understand until you’ve experienced it,” she said.

On a recent Wednesday, Miss Dunn leaves her home in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., at about 6 a.m. She arrives at her office in the department’s Rockville headquarters about one hour later and begins some paperwork.

Later, she pulls some of the guns out of the evidence storage room and dusts them for fingerprints. For each box she pulls off the shelf, she must complete a “chain of evidence” form.

Each gun is kept in a cardboard box that has been sealed by the officer who seized it. Miss Dunn carries the box into the evidence processing room, where she unseals it and cuts the plastic cable that keeps the gun in place.

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